Android O is going to bring a lot of changes to our favorite mobile platform, and one of the most visible for those of us using Nexus and Pixel products will be the emoji: Google is completely redesigning them. Again.

The new emoji are teased over at Emojipedia, who got an exclusive look at the redesigned characters. If you want the tl;dr - they're more circular now.

Emojipedia says every single emoji has been touched in this revamp, so they should all feel like they're part of the same design family. Android O will support the entire Emoji 5.0 character catalog, as well, which means something I think we all get behind: more emoji.

Express your feelings on the death of the blobs in the comments. Preferably using emoji.

That's the whole point. They are intentionally trying to get the emoji to be similar to Apple's so that context isn't lost when you send or receive an emoji across platform. There are so many times where I would get an emoji from an iPhone friend and I didn't get what they were saying because the emoji's weren't similar.

Marijn Kok

I agree. At first I hated them and thought they looked really ugly and minimal. But it grew on me. And now the new ones look too cluttered and iOS-like. So again, I'll probably just need to get used to it. They do look kinda nice I guess

Jay

Agreed. They grew on me and now I'm disappointed to see them go.

😆😄

"They" could be a LOT of features in Google products, sadly.

Bewear

Hangouts had acually grown on me, but now...

Savage Alien

but now you still use it everyday? Because that's what I do.

VAVAMk_2

I do too

Kimmy Gibbler

Everyone did. They were what made Android Android

Shane DeRidder

Ditto. I installed the O beta and was disappointed immediately to see the "new" emoji... :/

someone755

I liked the ones pre-Nougat. The new ones are bland, and the O ones are even blander. Oh well, I guess we'll be using root to change emojis now.

i did love the lil blob boys. But i appreciate being able to choose emoji based on what my friends will actually see on their end. These look more like the same emotion/style of every other emoji pack. Some of the more obscure faces had totally different connotations with the blob designs.

Mr_JtowN

When that one e-moji look like it came straight out of that recent apple commercial.

Berkay

They look like the iOS emojis.

Branko

That's the fucking point. It's like letter A looked like B on iOS and that's why they're trying to avoid.

The downside is that it looks iOS-y. And it's on Android. Each platform uses its own fonts, styles, and design language. Why should emoji (which is a font) be treated like a platform-independent component?

Gregory

Because emoji are used to convey emotions, you know. They should not look vastly different on different platforms so they aren't interpreted differently when you text from your Pixel to your friend who has an iPhone. Nobody likes misinterpretations.

DragoCubed

I get your point but compare the twitter emoji to the apple emoji. The twitter emoji just have a different style. Most of android emoji were similar to emoji on other platforms and had its own unique style. Just know I am talking about the Nougat emoji. I guess these are better in the end.

Gregory

There were several widely used emoji that looked extremely differently on Android vs iOS, like 😬 which is smiling on Android and is angry on iOS and in some messaging apps.

DragoCubed

I looked at the emojipedia and I could only find a fault with the grinning emojis in the new Android emoji set

WestIndiesKING

just give up, they dont want to get it. Last thing i want to worry about if im Android is having to keep updating emojis to make sure they match. Use the standard emojis and be done with it. I loved the blobs too but in the grand scheme of things this isnt that big of a deal. Plenty of times i would send emojis to ios users and they wouldnt see what i put for this very reason.

DragoCubed

😔 I never said all emojis were the same on android as they are on ios. I just said that most of them are. And by that I mean convey the same meaning, they can have different styles. Emojis really got fixed up in nougat. This is better in terms of cross compatibility I guess. These new faces are round and have teeth when they smile, just like ios. I really like that. I don't know why I bother. Send me an emojipedia link please.

Karan Harsh Wardhan

yup had a problem with someone when they mis-interpreted my response to their messages.

pfmiller

There used to be problematic inconsistencies between the Android and iOS emojis, but Google already corrected that. You can have stylistically different emojis that still clearly convey the same meaning.

DragoCubed

Yeah. Exactly, just as I said.

Gregory

I'm not saying that it's a good thing that they lost their unique style (about which I personally couldn't care less), I'm saying that they're finally consistent with iOS in terms of meaning. They could have done that as well while keeping the blobs I guess.

pfmiller

Yeah, but I'm saying they already did that. Which of their current emji convey a different meaning that their iOS counterpart?

Karan Harsh Wardhan

my personal favorite is the grimace emoji looks like a grin on iphone. dunno what people were getting when i was sending it to their android phones

Google should just adopt the standard ASCII character emojis then. You know, it's standard.

Gregory

I actually have to use these to avoid confusion ;)

Neil Smith

I'm fine with that. The iOS ones are better imo

Stylus_XL

I didn't mind the design of the previous emojis, but I sometimes found it difficult to tell which standard emoji they corresponded to. Hopefully this redesign makes that clearer...

Daniel Beehn

This, definitely. It's always been one of my biggest bugaboos when using emojis--because the designs between iOS and Android were so different, you never **really** knew if you were for sure using the right emoji to get your feelings across. "Standardizing" the emojis to some extent is the right thing to do, IMO.

Nathan Gage

At least give us the option to change to the old ones Google!!

Suicide_Note

👍👍

Marijn Kok

You'll be able to. With Android O you can install custom fonts and thus emojis

Mateusz Uszyński

How?

Nick

I think they're going to go over that later. IIRC they only mentioned it briefly so far.

Andrew

Hopefully Samsung is forced to support this change as well. The stock Samsung emojis are horrible.

If you are rooted you can use emoji switcher as well for older emoji, lg emoji, twitter emoji, samsung emoji, apple emoji etc.

FecFecFec

I understand you like looking at the blobs, but there´s has to be consistency in the message. If you change your emoji font only you´ll see it, the person that receives your message won´t.
I also like the blobs, but unless *insert message platform of choice* embeddes your emoji of choice, it doesn´t have a point.

Eduardo Pratti

I can't shake the feeling they're making everything worse as time goes on. Every design change is a downgrade, every new style is uglier than the previous, every emoji looks like a Chinese knockoff of a simple and cutesy design now with borders, cheap gradients and poorly drawn shapes.

Suicide_Note

👏👏👏👏👏

boop

Sounds like a personal problem

Suicide_Note

No, sounds like a 2 billion users problem.

HUEHUE BR

blablablaaaa

Suicide_Note

I'm sorry that facts upset you. Your life must be so tough.

HUEHUE BR

Blablablabla

Nick

I'm kind of in the same camp, however I'm going to give it a chance to grow on me. It's not that these design changes are completely awful, but I don't like they add anything.

That may just be just because I was used to how they used to do things.

Morten Ulv

The two last emoji changes were downgrades in my opinion, but if you're talking about overall design at Google, then I highly disagree.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooo. Too much convergence with Apple on this one. I wonder if the blobs will be a downloadable font in O though.

obversed

I agree these seem more "ios-like" but that's really not a bad thing. Emoji shouldn't look much different depending on what device you're on... hopefully this is a huge step in solving that issue. Obviously the problem really is with it being a part of the OS update. They should figure out how to update this with Google Play Services so that older devices get it too.

Mike Gonzalez

hmmm the new ones definitely look better but still got a long way to go to match Apple's detailed emoji's

FelschR

what a shame... I really liked the old icons :(

Haven't seen much of the new ones, though. Maybe I can adjust to them.

If I recall correctly, wasn't there some discussion about being able to swap system fonts (which would include emojis) at some point in Android O? Not seeing this feature anywhere inside the settings though currently.

DragoCubed

During Google I/O they said that you would be able to change fonts and emoji "later on"

Every design news from Android O are disappointing so far: quick glance at toggles takes more vertical space with no reason, settings app takes more taps to get where you want and now they finished to ruin the best emojis on any OS.

senor_heisenberg

Blobs are miles better.

Stakoman

No please no google!!!

walking_talking

Given they copied almost all elements of Apple's emoji design (sans being good and stuff) will they copy water gun as a replacement to a normal gun?

HUEHUE BR

shut up everyone.. this is so fucking better!

Bewear

NÃO, HUEHUEHUE.

HUEHUE BR

SIM, HUEHUEHUEHEUE

David

As long as their is no lame water gun instead of an actual gun. Also, I felt the blobs were more "kiddy" these new ones aren't that much better though.

Emojis should look the same across all platforms. I really hate that they aren't the same everywhere. The same emoji could have completely different meanings on an iPhone and Android as it is now. Hopefully these align more with the ones on iOS.

Forget vega #getEVGA

The problem isnt if they look the same or not , with my galaxy s4 on lollipop i cant see all emojis .....

They certainly did not but they were the first mobile OS to support it. I believe it took at least 2 years before Android supported it after iOS introduction. And let's be honest, the most used version of emoji is without a doubt the one on iOS. Emojis are a mess on Android. Google has one version, Samsung another LG another etc. This is very confusing and causes misinterpretation. I use emojis very sparingly for this very reason.

Thank god, one of the awesome things of root was using the emoji switched to switch to iOS ones instead of Android crappy blobs you'd never know what they mean.

Exalm

I liked the old ones. But I guess it's better when emoji are pretty much the same across platforms.

Тарас Мукин

New ones are too "bold". Look at the 😍 example. Shape is one thing (I personally don't mind but also don't like much blobs). But colors, shapes, sizes of everything. In blobs they are nice and simple — but now looks like every emoji design needs to scream it's emotion. HEARTS! AND MOUTH! AND CHEEKS ARE RED! YOU SEE THAT? THAT'S HOW I FEEL! Don't like it at all.

It got better when they became more round and now this new design seems even much better! In the example above, with the old one having these very similar colors, strange big and less human style I see why I didn't quite love them and am easily happy about something new. Even though they indeed always were giving a bit of identity and seemed rather thoroughly thought through, especially after the last greater redesign in my opinion.

spinner735

I WANT MY BLOBS BACK!!!!!

jsuhay

The new emojis are absolutely terrible. The blobs were no doubt the best ones out there.

The blobs were ok but now there's a lot less confusion with these new ones which ones to send people with iOS with the blobs I'm just like which smile is which I don't want to send this person a kissy face smile.

Vlad Madalin

Why doesn't Google just use EmojiOne?

Raphael Duran

My exact thoughts

Trysta

I will miss the blobs but it will be nice to use emoji that I know are similar to what my iOS using friends/family see.

Probably I'm the only one who preffers the new emojis. Maybe they dont have the best design, probably the gradient is awfull and the borders should be thinner. But at least they're streamlined with other platforms. Whenever an iOS/Windows user sends you an emoji, it could mean something different to you. Specially the "grinning face with smiley eyes", is actually smiling in the android version whereas the iOS/Windows one has a straight mouth.
Yes, maybe they're weird, but thats something that can be changed in the final version. At least they're better than Samsung's... shit, those are REALLY horrible.

DragoCubed

I prefer Samsung's over this. In terms of cross compatibility Samsung's emoji are terrible.

DragoCubed

Ew. All they really had to do was make the emoji have round faces, something like the twitter emoji. The gradient really reminds me of the 🍏 emoji. I loved the humans in the old emoji. The colour combination was beautiful. What a shame.

Badouken

God I miss the blobs... even if you hated them the animals and misc emojis looked a lot cleaner and now they suck! Oh well I'll probably get used to these new ones in like a week.

God damn it! I love those animations in Allo... use them so frequently 😆

jonzey231

Haha my fiancee and I just started using Allo again this past weekend and I was starting to utilize them more and more. Updated today and work and gone.

It's pretty janky on my 5X (waiting for my 6P to get back from Huawei) so I'll probably flash back to 7.1.2 when I get home from tonight. Battery was 100% when I left work at about 4:45 and now at 5:50 (with pretty much constant use, although no video or music) I'm already down to 54% lol.

ADofCLE

I think all phones should use the same emoji design (iOS). I'm tired of sending emojis to someone that has an android phone and not understanding what I'm sending lol

Plus iOS emojis just look better. Aside from the squirt gun haha

JG

If you want the tl;dr - they're more circular now.

First they came for my app icons...
Then they came for my Emoji...

I wonder what they're going to circle next...

[coincidentally, the shape of the upcoming Android name happens to be circle to]

lol y'all do this all time. Joke joke joke, bash, bash, bash, and then when they take it away or replace it when something else…

NO I want the old thing back!! 🙄🙄🙄 smh

Nilanjan Chatterjee

Google copies Whatsapp!! Shame!

Willie Chalmers III

Long live the blob! 😩

Corey Kinard

They go on about how they're the biggest Mobile OS with over 2billion active users and they concede emoji design to apple. Everyone going on about how finally iOS users will see what they send, and im just thinking about how i know almost nobody with an iPhone. hmmm.

DonEmu

I no longer need to flash "emoji one"

Luzandro

back to the 90s

Nick Coad

These look crap, but so did the blobs. At least now they look more similar to other emojis which I'm sure other people will hate, but for me it helps me to know that what I'm sending is at least a close approximation of what my friend will see on their end.

I think emoji should be as simple and plain as possible. 50%+ of population have bad vision. And even more people don't care to spend extra effort to examine nuances on those tiny pics.
I never can distinguish exact expressions on those crappy cartoons anymore. With every update those become more complex and uncomfortable.

The first picture's last emoji perfectly describes what I feel seeing these new emojis.

create812

I'm ok with the new iOS style shapes, but NOT the gradient style colors. Keep them flat, PLEASE!

Raphael Duran

These look more like Facebook's emoji, I honestly don't see the resemblance to the Apple ones other than they're both yellow circles and I'm pretty sure Apple didn't create circles or the color yellow. I like EmojiOne better anyways

I loved the recent flat blobs and thought they were fun and expressive, exactly what you want from an emoji. These ones just lack personality and the pseudo-3D design just looks so dated, especially among the rest of the very flat OS in the Android O Beta.

That being said, everything else in the beta I am really enjoying. But bring the blobs back!